N. Korea: US will never escape security threats if no result in talks

HANOI: North Korea’s state media said yesterday that the people of the United States would ‘never be cleared of security threats’ if this week’s nuclear talks in Vietnam end without results.

The North’s official KCNA news agency criticised US Democrats and others for ‘plotting to disrupt’ a second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump on Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi.

KCNA accused the Trump administration of ‘lending an ear’ to opponents of dialogue, even after the United States launched diplomatic efforts with North Korea.

“If the upcoming DPRKUS negotiations end without results as wished by the opponent forces, the US people will never be cleared of the security threats that threw them into panic and then responsibility will be placed on those due,” KCNA said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Their first meeting in Singapore in 2017 was a blockbuster piece of diplomatic theatre criticised as light on substance.

For the sequel, set in Hanoi this week, Trump and Kim will have to contend with harder questions.

The inaugural summit in Singapore between the two leaders of two countries that never signed a peace treaty after the 1950-53 Korean War was brief.

In a short pronouncement, they pledged to seek a ‘lasting and stable peace regime’, with Kim committing ‘to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula’.

There were no specific details, and disagreement over its interpretation has caused followup negotiations to stall.

Even South Korea’s dovish President Moon Jae-in, who seized on last year’s Winter Olympics to broker talks between rivals who had been trading personal insults and threats of war, has since described the text as ‘somewhat vague’. — Reuters